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 Chris' Review: Jim and I went out of our way to be prepared for this movie. We actually went out and purchased the newly released special edition of the first Riddick film, Pitch Black, and watched it the night before. Good flick. Not sure if it deserved a sequel, but a good movie nonetheless. What bothered me was the name on the box... The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black. When the movie was originally released, it was just Pitch Black... but then Vin Diesel's career took off and they decided to build a franchise around the main character of the movie. There is now an animated movie (Dark Fury), a video game (Escape from Butcher Bay), and Pitch Black, all under the umbrella of The Chronicles of Riddick. Now we have a movie where that's the entire title. Does this upset anyone else? If it had been the first one, fine... but come on... give the freaking thing a name! Ok, but what I'm really trying to review is the movie we saw last night. The Chronicles of Riddick (just The Chronicles of Riddick, not to be confused with any of the other media). The movie starts off a few years after Pitch Black ended. Riddick is running away from some more bounty hunters. Right off I felt there was something wrong. It didn't feel like the movie had started. I kept expecting there to be a Pepsi can coming into view or something. It took me a bit to understand why, but the special effects looked a little too slick. Too video game-y. In fact, all of the design in the entire movie was just SO over the top. Huge faces on EVERYTHING. I'm sure it was intended as some underlying god-complex subtext to the bad guys... but it was just too much. Everything felt like it was too much or that I'd seen it before. I just wasn't impressed with most of it. One tiny highlight might have been the outside doors on the surface of Crematoria... the rust and decay looked very realistic. I actually found myself thinking, "Wow, that really looks like rust decay." (I guess that doesn't say much for the swaying power of the story.) It took me until the end of the movie, reading over the credits, to figure out why. Industrial Light and Magic. Lucas' special effects company. The same guys who are working on the new Star Wars prequels. Ahhh... it all makes sense. These are the guys who made history with the effects in the original Star Wars movies... and then sat back and rested on their laurels while everyone else caught up and left them in the dirt. So my most significant problem with this movie (other than the name) would be the special effects and design. It's nice to see all this fantasy stuff, but you have to remember to put in the flaws... or it just looks like a slick H.R. Giger painting. Nothing wrong with Giger... but let's try to do a little more than scan in his images, guys. Other than that, the story wasn't half bad. Riddick really brings new meaning to the anti-hero. Wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ending is absolutely priceless and is a beautiful homage to the Conan legacy... I'm not going to elaborate on that because I don't want to spoil anything for those of you that haven't seen it. Great image though, and is a great place to start a very interesting sequel from. Sure, the story still had some severe problems, couple of minor plot holes, and (the same problem with Day After Tomorrow) unrealistic temperature fluctuations... but overall it holds itself together... even if it is with wire and duct tape. The direction was inconsistent. Moments of brilliance (the use of different color filters for planet changes and mood changes) to moments of mediocrity if not irrationality (What the heck was Judi Dench's character supposed to be doing, anyway? Why did Riddick just stand there while he watched his fellow Furion melt... and why didn't Riddick melt too since he was only a few feet away?) The saving grace of this movie (if it has one) was Vin Diesel. Vin was made for this role. He understands it and plays it perfectly. With some of his more recent films, he's been playing a different kind of hero/anti-hero but it never had that Riddick success. Here, he's back in the saddle using those two fists-full of gravel in his voice to quip things like, "Actually this is tea.... I'm going to kill you with my tea cup." If there is any hope of this franchise continuing, it depends solely on Riddick being played by Vin. Alexa Devalos also did an admirable job as Jack/Kyra. There was a kind of feral ferocity in her every look and her fight moves were incredible. Unfortunately for the movie, she wasn't utilized more. Her lines were slim pickings and her character never had a chance to develop. Very sad. We'll chalk that up to one of the great script injustices in the world. So overall, I'm giving this 2 thumbs up. Vin almost saved it... almost. But with the design problems, special effects glossiness, directorial inconsistency and mediocre supporting cast, even Vin's broad shoulders weren't enough to support this film. Hopefully someone somewhere will pony up the dough for a sequel because I really really enjoy the character, concept, and of course Vin's performance.   Jim's Review: "The Chronicles of Riddick" may well be the film that finally cements Vin Diesel's deserved reputation as the hottest action star of the decade. Pity it isn't a better film. That's not to say that it's bad, per se. It just isn't good. And it could have been. Diesel reprises his "Pitch Black" role, that of Riddick; convicted killer, escape artist, anti-hero, and all-around hard-boiled badass. In this film's predecessor, Riddick was a bounty hunter's prize, being carted in shackles across the galaxy, en route to his captor's payday at a remote correctional facility. But mechanical failure left him and the transport's other surviving passengers stranded, spaceship-wrecked on a distant, three-sunned desert planet. A planet that fell into an unfortunate 22-year eclipse cycle during the castaways' stay, releasing a locust-like swarm of ravenous nocturnal creatures to prey on whatever their sonar could pick up. Due to a nifty, prison-surgery-acquired ability to see in the dark, Riddick managed to survive and escape, taking precious few survivors off with him. As "Riddick" opens, Diesel is once again being tracked by bounty-hunting mercenaries, but this time, as we soon discover, for more noble purposes. Riddick manages to elude his hunters, but interrogates their chief Toombs (a delightfully greasy Nick Chinlund) about his employer. Toombs coughs up a planet, and Riddick instantly knows who sent the dogs...One of only two people who would have had any inkling as to where to find him: The Muslim cleric who was one of the only other two survivors of the first film. And, just like that, the hunted becomes the hunter. Riddick thieves the mercenary's ship, and heads out to find the Imam. When he does, he discovers the reason he was sought: The Imam's home planet, Helion Prime, is evidently next on the hit list of the "Necromongers". The Necros are an intergalactic cult that makes their way systematically across the galaxy, converting or killing every human life in their path, then scorching the earth of each planet as they depart. The Imam has decided Riddick is his planet's only hope to defend them, and so sought him out. Riddick, being a real look-out-for-number-one kind of guy, isn't necessarily interested in helping, but gets sucked into the film's storyline anyway through a convoluted series of occurrences. As villains, the "Necromongers" (led by the "Lord Marshal", Paycheck's Colm Feore) don't exactly work. I had a hard time deciding what was sillier: Their aesthetic sense (blatantly ripped off from H.R. Giger), their megalomaniacal "join us or die" mentality (on loan from the Borg), their name (eye-rollingly heavy-handed, just in case you didn't pick up on their M.O.), or their proclivity for thunderously pedestrian dialogue. They couldn't stop talking like...well...shitty movie villains. They kept prattling along about "The Necromonger WAY" and spouting catchphrase-y mantras of oversimplified rhetoric and obvious plot exposition. I had a hard time swallowing the fact that these dull, slow-witted apes were capable of tying their own stylish pewter boots, much less conquering a universe. Particularly poor is Thandie Newton as Dame Vaako, who comes of as little more than a mannequin for the costume designer. I don't think she could've delivered a convincing line reading at gunpoint. Still, it's hard to deny Diesel's charisma. Every frame he's in crackles and smolders. You're never sure if he's going to crack wise, or crack skulls, but you know he'll do each with equal skill. He definitely carries this film, and saves it from being a complete turkey. He had to know he wasn't doing Ibsen, but he nevertheless does everything he can in each scene to bring the rest of the movie up to his personal level of style and energy, while never succumbing to hamminess or overwrought pretension. Sometimes, it works. At other points, he's the only thing going on that's worth a damn. Nevertheless, from the hold of a spaceship, to the confines of a prison, to a blood-soaked battle room, Diesel is at once hypnotic and electrifying to watch. Overall, this is a much larger film than its predecessor; which, while the superior effort, feels retroactively claustrophobic by comparison. Although the contrast in feel is nice, and Diesel's performance assures that Riddick moves through the proceedings with tight character consistency, I would've liked to have seen "Chronicles of Riddick" NOT fall into the typical sequel trap of making everything bigger, flashier, and louder, but dropping sharply in quality from the first film regardless. I'm giving "Chronicles of Riddick" three thumbs up. All three points in the positive column are awarded to Diesel, but the film gets seven negative points for being derivative, colorless, predictable, plagued with a handful of poor performances, and a complete and utter throwaway waste of the otherwise-wonderful Judi Dench. BackHome - Info - Reviews - Map - Message Board - Photo Album |
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